Change Job colour for Support DPS (BRD/MCH) to another colour?

As the title suggests. A lot of people seem to not be aware that BRD/MCH are support DPS. So, I think that the best option would be to add a Support category. They'd still take DPS slots, but people would stop expecting them to do as much damage as a pure DPS class, and supporting at the same time. Personally, I recommend Purple.

But, my Bard is rarely last among the DPS when it matters, even when of the same or lower ilvl than the others?...

...And wouldn't this then have to apply to NIN and AST as well, as their personal outputs are similarly reduced as well to make room for their raid buffs?

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Originally Posted by Soalean

As the title suggests. A lot of people seem to not be aware that BRD/MCH are support DPS. So, I think that the best option would be to add a Support category. They'd still take DPS slots, but people would stop expecting them to do as much damage as a pure DPS class, and supporting at the same time. Personally, I recommend Purple.

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Is a bard a support DPS? Serious question.

I ask this because when you look at the amount of support a bard offers a party. it's not actually a whole lot.

then if you compare thatto the amount of support a ninja brings to party for example. it blows bard out of the water.

brd can increase damage by 10% for caster for as long as mp allows.
and it can help contribute mp or tp at at cost of lowering its already low dps.
it can do one of those 3 things at any given time if it has mp to do sp

Ninja can increase damage for the entire party does with trick attack, increase damage for a lot of them with dancing edge. it can support the party with enmity control abilities, It can stun and silence, and it can help manage tp in long drawn out fights. and it does all of that at no cost to its dps and it can do it all at the same time.

it brings a ton more support to a battle than anything a bard can do.

almost every class in the game provides as much if not more support as brd / mch so why should those 2 be separated out?

this is why a lot of people think brd doesn't fit in so well. because if its going to have caster bow mage game play it needs caster levels of damage. and the excuse of support is invalid because of how little it actually offers in comparison to the rest of jobs

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Is a bard a support DPS? Serious question.

(examples)

almost every class in the game provides as much if not more support as brd / mch so why should those 2 be separated out?

this is why a lot of people think brd doesn't fit in so well. because if its going to have caster game play it needs caster levels of damage. and the excuse of support is invalid because of how little it actually offers in comparison to the rest of jobs

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I think you hit the nail on the head. I'm gonna leave this post up anyway, because maybe people'll open their eyes and realize.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

if you compare that to the amount of support a ninja brings to party for example. it blows bard out of the water.

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In all honesty, I have always seen NIN as a support job as well. In my eyes, the support (or hybrid support) jobs in this game are BRD, MCH, NIN, PLD (ish, wishful thinking) and AST.

Tbh I don't think anyone, including the devs themselves, see Bard or Machinist as support dps rather than just a dps with utility.
Considering the fact that Dragoons can buff the dps of Bard / Machinist and increase the critical hit rate of the entire party, and that Ninjas can restore a party member's TP as well as help with enmity control, it's hard to justify the idea of Bard / Machinist being anything other than standard dps. The main reason they both have lower dps than other jobs is because they're physical ranged, not because they're intended to be support.
It's unfortunate and I'd 100% having them be treated as actual support classes, especially since it's a role that's appeared in most traditional FF's with a job system as well as many other MMOs. But frankly, I don't think the devs want to have to deal with balancing them and thus won't ever solidify their identity as 'support'.
The game's all-consuming obsession with dps doesn't help this either, because ultimately even if Bard and Machinist were considered full-on support classes, nobody would use them because they wouldn't want to trade out dps for utility unless said utility was incredibly powerful.

Now that I think about, I do remember than in the alpha (or was it early beta?) Archer/Bard did actually have a different color from the standard dps. This was when they still used Conjurer as a sub-class and could use Protect, Stoneskin, Cure, but for reasons far beyond mortal ken the devs decided to do away with this idea altogether

I'm curious then. Why the whole "Physical ranged must do less damage than magic ranged"? Supposedly it'd make them overpowered, but I'm not seeing anywhere why that'd make them overpowered? Especially since they both now function with cast times, like the magic ranged DPS.

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Originally Posted by Soalean

I'm curious then. Why the whole "Physical ranged must do less damage than magic ranged"? Supposedly it'd make them overpowered, but I'm not seeing anywhere why that'd make them overpowered? Especially since they both now function with cast times, like the magic ranged DPS.

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Who knows, it's honestly one of those quirks that the devs picked up and seemed to have forgotten about dropping. It's probably because of how overpowered Bard was in 2.0, with people putting them in all 4 dps slots for raids. I think they're terrified that something like that may happen again, and since they couldn't think of a way to balance them out properly, they just decided to pidgeon-hole all physical ranged as 'support', despite them ostensibly not being 'support' at all.

I'm going to be extremely cynical here and say they probably just done this because it's easy option; they can claim the game has 'support' jobs to give a better illusion of choice, ranged physical are balanced, no need to spend time or resources balancing them all out properly. I truly hope that this isn't the case and there's some other reason why they don't think ranged physical can be pure dps, but since they've never discussed it I don't think we'll ever get a straight answer

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Originally Posted by Soalean

I'm curious then. Why the whole "Physical ranged must do less damage than magic ranged"? Supposedly it'd make them overpowered, but I'm not seeing anywhere why that'd make them overpowered? Especially since they both now function with cast times, like the magic ranged DPS.

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They aim to have roughly equal raid contributions, over time and per-event, over the majority of possible compositions. Whatever caster dps is added via Bard/MCH can be considered part of their own when it comes to its compositional merit.

That said, I don't know why there's no pure(r) dps ranged option either. Nor can I guess why all forced support ranged options (those that are forced to pay to some degree out of their general dps capabilities to merely have the option to support) are all equally reduced ahead of time, rather than having closer numbers originally and falling further only when supporting, or any point on the spectrum there-between (low-cost support but reduced general dps vs. near-equal general dps, but dps-costly support).

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Originally Posted by Soalean

I'm curious then. Why the whole "Physical ranged must do less damage than magic ranged"? Supposedly it'd make them overpowered, but I'm not seeing anywhere why that'd make them overpowered? Especially since they both now function with cast times, like the magic ranged DPS.

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Ranged dps cast times are 1.5s with 2.5 gcd meaning they get 1 second of free movement. Blm and smn mostly are locked in place and moving penalizes their dps. For this reason ranged dps have lower dps to compensate.